Going Places with Lowell Thomas, #30: A weird, dusty time capsule

If you have any patience for old travelogues that feel like they were stitched together by a madman, this is fine. It's not really a "movie" in the way we talk about Captain Blood, where you actually have characters or a point. If you want a narrative, you will hate this. If you just want to see what 1930s cameras thought the Yangtze river looked like, then maybe stay for a bit.

The whole thing starts in Arizona at the Petrified Forest. It’s very quiet. You get these long, lingering shots of rocks that honestly look like they’ve been sitting there for a million years, which I guess is the point. The narrator is very serious, like he's telling you the secrets of the universe, but he's really just talking about petrified wood.

Then, for no reason at all, we are at a glass-blowing plant. The transition is basically non-existent. One second you're in the desert, the next you're watching guys sweat over furnaces. It’s hypnotic, though. The way the hot glass moves—like honey made of light—is the only time the camera actually feels alive.

The Yangtze stuff

The China segment is where it gets really weird. The footage is super shaky. It feels like the cameraman was barely holding onto the boat. You see all these people working in the river, and the scale of the gorges is actually kind of wild, even if the picture quality is all beat up and grainy.

It’s nowhere near the scale of Queen Kelly, but it has that same feeling of being an artifact that survived a fire. Nobody talks, really. Just the narration droning on and on.

• The jump cuts are jarring. It feels like someone sneezed while editing.
• The glass-blowing guy has a very intense stare.
• The music is mostly just one track looping until you want to scream.

It’s not a masterpiece. It's not even a good documentary. But it's oddly honest. It’s just a camera pointed at stuff. I don't know, maybe watch it if you're bored and want to feel like a time traveler for ten minutes. 🎞️